


a falling star (fell from your heart)

by rainingover



Series: songs about stars (an nct space!verse) [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Space, Falling In Love, Forbidden Love, M/M, Pining, Space Stations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 06:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17719487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainingover/pseuds/rainingover
Summary: Ten switches his Window view to Earth Mode #9 and in place of darkness appears a cityscape of high-rise apartment blocks and a sprinkle of white stars in the distance.(Johnny lives on earth and Ten doesn't, and ithurts.)





	a falling star (fell from your heart)

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to the anon on cc who prompted me 'long distance relationship'  
> this is... a very literal interpretation! <3

Ten switches his Window view to Earth Mode #9 and in place of darkness appears a cityscape of high-rise apartment blocks and a sprinkle of white stars in the distance. This is an oxymoron of a scene if ever there was one, because Ten knows that there is nowhere left on earth - not in cities, nor never-ending plains of grass - where the stars can be seen by human eye anymore, and he knows that firsthand. Still, Ten knows that Johnny lives in a high-rise building like the ones out of his Window (version six) and so, if he really, really tries to, he can almost feel Johnny there next to him, his hair tickling Ten's shoulder as he rests his chin there.

Taeyong only has a version four Window in his apartment (not that it’s a competition), but then Taeyong doesn’t spend much time pretending to watch stars, so it doesn't really matter if he's using outdated Culture Technology. He has Doyoung up here with him - his lover in secret, but a lover all the same - and he’s never been to earth, so he has little time nor regard for imagining life down there. Earth is an old rock, good-for-nothing, and those left behind, tasked with reaping the last of its resources and transferring them back to the space stations, aren’t much thought of by anyone in their rank anymore. 

Ten thinks of them, though. He thinks of them all the damn time. Or, he thinks of one of them - of Johnny, with his heart shaped mouth and his black-hole eyes, and his midas touch that can bring Ten to his knees in an _instant._ Of a love truer than the stars themselves.

Ten sits at his Window, which, yes, he does know isn’t a window at all - it's really just a screen in masquerade because humans, apparently, don’t much like to be reminded that they’re trapped within four walls, and need the illusion of an escape route to stay sane, night after night. And night after night he imagines that it's Johnny’s window instead, imagines that he's sitting on Johnny's lap and staring out at the real night sky, black and constant and real as his own heartbeat, as Johnny kisses his shoulder and asks Ten in _that_ voice if he wants to go to bed.

 

 

 

They did that a lot, back when Ten was on earth with him too. Going to bed is just part of routine now, but then–  _ oh – _ then, it was a spectacle, a blinding-bright marvel which sparked the sort of fire inside of him that Ten had no idea could exist. Going to bed was this: a burning touch that could never be sated and it was whispered words in a language that transcended everything. Going to bed was warm hands and hot mouths and a searing white behind Ten’s eyes as he came. 

Ten misses nights with Johnny, and days with Johnny, and the way that Johnny would smile at him like he was  _ everything _ , and would tell him that he loved him more and more each day. 

When Ten was reassigned to Provision Retention on the space station, he was given only three days to pack his belongings and say goodbye to the old rock humanity had once called home. Saying goodbye to a planet was easy. A planet wasn’t home. The space station wasn't home, either, not now. Now home was a man, and saying goodbye to him was impossible. Ten argued with Control, cursed and begged and demanded to stay in his post in charge of Resource Reaping. And even when Taeyong contacted him on his (version three)  Vokal Link and tried to soothe him in the way only best friends know how, the raging flood of lava in Ten’s veins still couldn’t be quietened. 

“Why did they send me down here,” he asked. He was trying so very hard not to cry. “If they were going to steal me back again, back up there to _nothing,_ after a year?”

“They aren’t stealing you.” Taeyong’s voice - even from so far away - was clear. “You’re just being reassigned. You know how it goes.”

“No one else is being reassigned.” He’d clenched his fists into tight balls at his side. Johnny had been there, he remembers, and he’d reached out and unfolded the fingers on one of Ten's hands and had stroked each one gently, slowly. There was love in his touch. Ten misses that the most. “This is a  _ punishment _ .”

Ten can’t remember what Taeyong had said to that, but their Vokal Link had ended quite soon after.

The night before he boarded the ship back to the Station, Ten slid his Vokal Link earpiece under Johnny’s pillow. “I’ll say I lost it,” he says. “Then I'll find a way to connect– then we can still talk.”

Johnny had kissed him then, and it was so right, so perfect, that Ten wished he could stop time and live, forever and ever, in that one moment. The next morning Ten had picked up his bags, and then he'd dropped them again and had buried his face into Johnny’s chest and let him card his fingers through his hair and whisper sweet nothings to him until he felt strong enough to pull away. 

When he’d unpacked his bags in his room on the Space Station, Window set to Venus Mode #3 - soothing and nothing like the planet he’d left behind, he’d found his Vokal Link earpiece nestled inside a sweater he hadn’t packed. Johnny’s sweater. Johnny’s sweater that he must have slipped into Ten’s case without him knowing before he woke up on their last day. Johnny’s sweater with their only possible form of communication caught up inside it.

 

Ten gets down from the ledge of his Window, and pulls the white blind down over it. He heads into his ensuite bathroom and splashes his face three times, each time with colder water, until he can’t stand the cold. Going to bed is just something to do at the end of a day now, like it was before his year on earth. Like it was before he knew love. 

Its funny, Ten thinks, that relationships between ranks are prohibited, as though falling in love is a choice and not a miracle in this vastness of a universe filled with desperate beings clinging to life. It’s funny, he thinks, that no matter what Control say, or do, or where they assign people to work, love can’t be stopped. It couldn’t be stopped for Taeyong and Doyoung (not that Ten would ever, ever tell on them) and it can’t be stopped for him and Johnny.

They might be as far away from each other in the galaxy as is possible, they might have no means of communication. They might one day forget how the other sounds and tastes and feels. Maybe. But they’ll still love each other, Ten knows that. 

Ten pulls off his regulation tshirt and pulls Johnny’s sweater on over his head, before he gets into bed and says a little prayer to the stars to bring Johnny to him again.

In the morning he plays Earth Mode #2 as he loads up the list of Weekly Reassignments on his Video Link, and as he catches sight of a particular name and rank number, his breath catches in his throat and there’s a weakness in his knees he hasn’t felt for a long time.   
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> kiss kiss for your nice face. leave me your thoughts (and/or come see me @ [twitter](https://twitter.com/lilacsui) or [CC](https://curiouscat.me/rainingover))  
> i feel like i would definitely like to write more in this world, idk if anyone would be interested though!


End file.
